I’m curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.
Because windows is preinstalled on the computer they buy. That is literally it
Yeah no, that’s literally not it. It’s because Windows is the only user-friendly OS that they can install.
@HughJanus windows is not user friendly. You are confusing familiarity with ease of use.
Most are familiar with it since its widely used as the first OS since school. Give it to a lifelong mac user and see how much they struggle. Even ones who are using windows for nearly a decade struggle as soon as they need to use anything more than office, chrome or the file explorer. They fear the control panel nearly as much as they would a terminal and i have to give detailed instruction on what to click
You people keep saying this but it’s simply not true. I used Windows for 20 years and never went into the CLI, which is basically a daily occurrence to complete basic tasks in Linux.
For example, today I went to download the new Simplex app. On Windows, download and run the .exe and it installs itself. Done.
On Linux, they only have a .deb version. So to install that on Fedora I have to install some other program, and the only way to install the program is from the CLI. Tried to do that. The first command I copied and pasted the first command into the CLI and…nothing happened. Not even an error message. Give up.
The end.
@HughJanus whos ‘you people’ here? My point was that just as terminal for linux is scary, many people find even the control panel in windows scary and hard to use. Your personal experience may vary but many issues you point to isnt linux specific.
Assuming you refer to simleX chat, I just grabbed the appimage from their github release page, marked it executable and ran it without a hitch. Took me 5-10 clicks and nearly the same as for Windows. Don’t have fedora RN but assume its the same.
whos ‘you people’ here?
“You people” who are delusional and incessantly lie about how “easy” things are.
My point was that just as terminal for linux is scary, many people find even the control panel in windows scary and hard to use.
This is not even remotely comparable. You don’t need the control panel to install software (a basic task), and even if you do need it for something, it’s fairly intuitive. You just click around until you find what you need. Using the CLI requires you to have a working knowledge of a fucking encyclopedia of gibberish commands.
Your personal experience may vary but many issues you point to isnt linux specific.
Yes. They are.
@HughJanus
Legitimately don’t remember the last time I *had* to use a terminal to install a program in linux, I pretty much just click to install everything using KDE’s Discover store, except for things I download off github which often come as appimages which are practically the same as windows executables in terms of ease of use
@vaidooryam@HughJanus completey glances over the solution for your precise problem and yet making strawman arguments of how tough linux is and calling others liars without providing any valid proof. End of our conversation. Stay classy.
LOL how exactly do you expect me to prove this? It’s just a case of simple observation and I’ve provided detailed examples. You just don’t like them.
Nobody ever installs windows themselves
You’re focusing on the wrong part of my statement
He’s right, most people don’t install an OS. They use whatever it comes with.
Jesus Christ 🤦♂️
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Nope. Not true. Windows has an intuitive and easy to use GUI for everything. Linux depends on CLI for basic functions with commands that aren’t even the same across the various distros. It’s as simple as that.
Yeah. Windows isn’t a choice. It’s what you get if you never question what OS you use.
Linux is not an operating system and pretending it is one is counter-productive. Take Ubuntu or Mint or SteamOS or whatever and call that Official Linux™ if you want, I guess. Or, we can actually promote those operating systems in their own right instead of calling them “flavor of Linux”
tl;dr FrAgMeNtAtIon
There, saved you a click.
I am going to bring it up a level. I don’t really agree with the surface level analysis of ZDNET.
It’s all a bit janky. The jank is really reduced BUT it is there. There are two flavors: distro jank and app jank. And the reason it’s janky is because the maintainers want it that way.
We should applaud the dedication of companies and people to relentlessly improve. Things are as great as they have ever been. This stuff is hard and Linux does make some things really really simple.
But…go to any distro support site, and you will see the usual things. Why does the secondary monitor not turn on. Why did audio stop working, laptop won’t wake. Etc etc. the solutions are better and better, but unique hw cfgs causing distros jank is one hill to climb.
The other are the apps. Again, I am glad they are there. And they are better than ever.
However, sometimes app workflow causes a great app to feel janky. It’s like “good enough” is all the love they get.
Finally, the open source community can be a removed to work with. Anyone who has ever submitted a patch knows that some projects and tools are … interesting.
It’s like…thank you for your time, but your patch to eliminate jank is rejected because … ego.
Not all open source repos are like this. But more are than you’d think. Different ideas are not always welcome, even if end users would appreciate those very same ideas.
And the repos with a more open mind? No surprise that their results are more usable.
Mostly because not all games work on Linux. Also so far I haven’t found one with a good update policy. It’s either bleeding edge or an update a year.
“There are 14 competing standards!”
“We should make a new one that has all the benefits of the others, and everyone can use that.”
“There are now 15 competing standards!”
Rinse and repeat.
yesterday i woke up and didnt found the settings icon in the menu. i had to sudo apt the thing (ubuntu, maybe this is a garbage distro. would fedora or deb be more stable ? ) also why would i have to look up arch documentation for a problem i had with ubuntu ? people using windows just worry about… windows, not 90 flavours of the thing. nonetheless, windows has become bloated trash beyond win 7.
why would i have to look up arch documentation for a problem i had with ubuntu?
Because they’re all built on the same software for the most part.
I don’t really know what kind of issue you had, so I can’t say if the following would really work better for you, anyway my personal recommendation is Silverblue for (usually) fewer headaches
You mean you have tried it before?
Ah I get it, it’s really solid so I don’t think you’d have regrets, plus you get up to date software!
Ubuntu is really just meh these days, it is still pretty reliable, but it doesn’t look like they’re really caring a lot about their users, just my outsider opinion, as I left it a few years ago now
I did it for 3 reasons:
- hunting for PPAs, which was annoying
- older versions of software, especially for development, I used to try out new features a lot for things like PHP and other stuff (but it’s kind of a moot point now with things like Distrobox or Nix)
- upgrades to the latest major version often breaking because I first moved to the latest non-LTS and then, when it came out, to the newest LTS, contributed by the fact that the PPAs would break, since the devs behind them needed to push a new version for the last Ubuntu release
Today I still wouldn’t use it for their push of Snap, I just don’t dig it, I much prefer Flatpak for my apps
I hope you’ll overcome your love hate relationship and settle your differences.
sends hugIf they prefer debian distros
I want to suggest Vanilla OS, but until the new Orchid is released I’ll hold off from it, I thought it would be coming sooner by now, but I guess they still have a lot of work to do
Haha thanks!
Hugs back
I had gotten a used laptop with Win10Pro, and I only use Windows for work. I’ve always wanted to try Fedora, so I took this opportunity (I grabbed the Win10Pro key off of it beforehand, of course), and I’m very glad I did. Gentoo will be next, I think.
Vanilla looks very interesting! It looks like a very real prospect that I may be able to recommend to new users. Ubuntu’s Unity has caused several people to whom I’ve recommend it, to revert back to Windows. Maybe Vanilla will keep them on Linux. I actually stopped recommending Ubuntu because of Unity, and started recommending Mint to Windows users or Budgie to Mac users. I know it’s somewhat configurable, but the side app bar of Unity and the Windows 8 style app menu were among some of the reasons they disliked Ubuntu. They said that it felt “ancient”.
grabbed the Win10Pro key off
Oh that’s possible? I had no idea, well, not like I felt the need after discovering MAS on GitHub 👀
Good call on the change of recommendations imo, although I worry that those DEs might receive the Wayland treatment too late, that’s a pretty important aspect to me.
The “ancient” thing was just funny thoI use HBCD, grab the keys, and reboot into the Linux installation ISO.
I forgot about MAS!! Man, those scripts were so important when Vista just started losing its registration for kicks and giggles. I haven’t really gotten into Wayland, so I’m not familiar with it’s benefits yet, but know (just from reading comments) that’s they’re plentiful.
Good to know, thanks for the info!
MAS is the GOAT TBH- acronym overload
In my experience the only improvement I actually noticed on Wayland was finally being able to screenshare correctly distinct monitors and app windows, there’s definitely a whole lot of smaller things that got better with it though, as you say, so I think (if your hardware plays well with it) it is worth moving to
He’s wrong.
I use Windows because I have Windows software I need to use, whether for work or gaming, and I just want that shit to work with zero effort on my part.
I have a solution to this I use. If asked I just tell people to use Kubuntu. You might pick a different distribution, I choose Kubuntu for a variety of reasons.
“What linux should I use?”
“Kubuntu”.
No other options given or discussed.
It’s my “official linux” even though I no longer use it personally.
Now you just have to do the same. Pick your own official linux that’s going to be the only one you tell people to use in real life.
Maybe in a few years they’ll decide to distro hop once they understand more, but right here and now they want one answer.
This is also the distro I tell others to use, it’s what I started on and I enjoy Linux now.
This guy:
There are 100 competing distributions:
“Let’s add one more, one that’s standardized and designed to make it easy for users to start using Linux.”
There are now 101 competing distributions.
Even for someone like me who prefers linux I still end up using windows most of the time. Even with 90% of games working on linux, theres that 10% I still need to boot up windows for.
If I could only count the number of articles that have made this argument before. Ugh. Nothing new to see here.
“Why dont more people use the linux desktop” its because they don’t care about computers. To most people computers are a tool and they are not interested in what the underlying software is doing as long as they can run a web browser.
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I have friends who pc game a lot and their desktop background is the default Microsoft logo. Everytime I see it i say “don’t you want to customize your computer even just a bit” and they reply “what would I even do?”
Or because Windows comes pre-installed on almost all machines. Many people don’t even know what “operating system” is. It’s just a part of the computer for them.
Bingo.
Despite what the clickbait headline says, the main barrier to entry is not just knowing what an operating system is but the know-how to go about replacing the one that came with the computer in the first place. The decision over which distro to choose is relatively easy once you’ve got past that initial stage.
Or MacOS. They’ve made it seem like those are the only two options besides chromebooks which are just for those who don’t want to spend money.
steam deck proves this. If everyone loved windows so much they would install it on the deck but they don’t. Microsoft pays the PC makers in the states a lot of money to keep Windows Pre-Installed. Even then Hp put our a dev Linux Laptop because Dev’s want a Unix like OS ether Linux or Mac.
Valve made games “just work” on the Steam Deck. No tweaks, CLI, hacks, or major performance issues. They took away the friction. I hope that in time all games will just work on Linux. When that happens and I can use my gaming peripherals like wheels and pedals I’ll be giving up Windows on my gaming PC.
Man this is so wrong, I don’t even know where to start.
If everyone loved windows so much they would install it on the deck
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Valve has dedicated millions of dollars to making shit work on Linux so that MS cannot control them.
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Specifically on handhelds, Windows is ass. Because it’s not designed for them. That’s why Valve developed a version of Linux specifically intended for this single device.
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Windows is still installed on like 95% of gaming PCs because “everyone loves it so much”.
Microsoft pays the PC makers in the states a lot of money to keep Windows Pre-Installed.
What? No. MS charges the PC makers to install Windows, not the other way around… Why would they pay them?
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On the same token - anyone who also knows what an OS is shouldn’t care either. Use the best OS for your job and needs. Reap the benefits of all of the OSs that you can run and switch between them like an army knife. It is the best when all of them complement each other.
i will agree with this when Linux has 5 to 10% market share just enough to where manufacturers can’t ignore us anymore. The problem will come cause the stuff they ignore us with. Is full featured but garbage drivers with Spyware like crap print drivers with pop-up ads or games with rootkits for drm.
For me I dont agree with “Use the best OS for your job and needs” sometimes I am willing to use a less functional product because I believe that the future would be better with more FOSS software. Morally I cant dual boot windows to play the games that dont support linux because then im supporting microsoft and games that support mircosoft.
That’s ok if you look at it that way. But at the end of the day, it’s just a tool like any other. Personally I find it really silly to put any moral questions into it because I don’t believe it’s worth my time to think about it, lose time on silly things and/or sacrifice the quality of my work. I’m not trying to imply anything about Linux, btw, it’s the same for the other ways around. It just feels stupid because it ends up like a political discussion, when it really shouldn’t be. You have the option to use basically anything and choosing to limit yourself over that is just plain stupid imo. You could make the arguments for how they process data, which is a whole other discussion, but then again, there are plenty of workarounds to all of those problems (which is exactly what some people are doing with virtualization, different machines entirely, OS tweaks, etc., which is fine, because they’re benefiting from it). Nothing against FOSS or otherwise, btw, I do agree about the need to support, but there are so many other ways to do it. Just using it isn’t enough, sadly. As the point of this OP is - it’s also market adoption, marketing itself, etc. None of this changes the fact that using certain tool(s) (e.g. gdb) is best done on a certain OS (e.g. a Linux distro) at a given time.
I feel the same way. I’ve been riding the Linux daily driver train for over a decade now. Back when I first made the switch, Proton wasn’t a thing. I could dual boot to play the games that wouldn’t run on Wine but I instead made the decision to only buy new games that were Linux native and if existing games didn’t run on Wine then it was tough bikkies.
But the issue is that most people sadly don’t give a shit. They don’t give any thought at all about sending money to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. despite the fact that those companies are playing a part in actively degrading the user experience (amongst other things). They don’t think about how they’re screwing over themselves in the long run as well as the younger generations. Most people don’t think much beyond what the advertising tells them to buy, convenience and ease of use.
I wish people made more ethical consumer choices but they just don’t. And that habit won’t change while big business has collectively billion dollar advertising budgets, gets away with monopolising and centralising and has government and regulators in their back pockets.
Not only do people generally not do ethical consumerism, but also often ridicule those who do. Quite infuriating, and would be astonishing if it wasn’t so predictably human nature. Presumably it is painful to be reminded that one did not go through the effort to make a conscientious decision but someone else did, and so one belittles the decision and the person willing to make it.
I’ve always said this to people. I use Windows, Linux, and MacOS. I use whatever best suits what I’m doing and I like that idea. It may end up being 20/70/10, but so what. Why battle a shitty Linux app If you have a good MacOS app. Or maybe your liking that windows app for a certain task.
In reality this is really only something a dev or power user would really do though.
Exactly. That’s what matters. That’s why SteamOS is on Steam Deck, or Linux distros on POS machines, or Windows on ATMs (which is kinda depressing ngl), etc.
It’s a tool, nothing more, nothing less. An OS is just a gateway to other apps at the end of the day.
Somewhere between 2000 and 2015 pretty much everyone had a computer, because you needed it for doing all the computer stuff. Nowadays you can do so much on a mobile device that there’s no urgent need to even own a proper computer any more unless you need to do something very specific.
Professionals and hobbyists will continue to need computers in the future, but Joe Average won’t. You can pay your bills using a phone and watch movies on a tablet. Joe doesn’t have a 3D printer, write ISO images on USB sticks, try to recover data from old hard disks, flash LineageOS on an old Android phone, or SSH into a raspberry pi. If he still has an old laptgop tucked away in a drawer, it’s probably been sitting there for years because he hasn’t really needed it for anything.
So true, outside of work I haven’t used a pc/laptop in over 4 years.
I have an android phone and tablet and they serve the majority of my needs perfectly.
That said I’m about to get one of my daughter’s old MacBook airs which is beyond OS updates and am going to put Linux on it to tinker with some things I can’t do on android. Still not sure which OS to go with but am fifty fifty between Ubuntu and Pop_OS.
Flip a coin and pick one of them. If you face some strange problems and later find out it’s because of the distro, it’s time to do some distrihopping. Before that, it’s important to get started with something.
For me, the biggest reason not to use linux are windows-only apps like CAD software. That software was a must have on my university, and now Im stuck with it lol. I switched to linux anyway, but still struggling to find best workflow between dual boot and windows in VM.
But linux today is so available and friendly. I have POP! OS on my desktop and partner can use it with no problem (windows user). Its so freaking intuitive, much easier to install and use compared to windows IMO. I believe people are not afraid as much as they dont care and microsoft is pushing their OS much more than any other alternative
FreeCAD isn’t the worst and has the ability to output several file formats. But it’s definitely wonky and probably not up to the task if that’s like your actual job or whatever. I don’t know your scenario, but you might check it out if you’re still using CAD. It is free.
But yeah, in general, required software is the big hiccup.
Thx, I did try it. FreeCAD is great, but cant compare with software like Solidworks. Feels like 30 years difference unfortunately. Im afraid Im too old for that, but Im sure future generations will have proper FOSS alternative on Linux. I just try not to use it because I hate dual boot hehe.
There are fow more programs I need, but I can run them easy in VM/vine
I’ve settled on using wsl2 on a windows machine. I run Ubuntu and kali in wsl as virtual machines on my main windows computer. I was an early user of linux and bsd but have found it’s just plain easier to run day to day on windows.
I run both Ubuntu and kali simply because I haven’t been able to make sound work correctly with Ubuntu on wsl but it works great in kali, plus kali has all the pentesting stuff so I can play around with that in my free time.
I literally don’t think the plethora of choices has anything to do with why Linux is not installed by the masses. The only reason is that Microsoft and Apple are huge market forces with the ability to advertise, make deals with other business partners, pre-install their operating systems onto hardware that’s sold, operate technical support services, and so on. They have completely flooded the market with their stuff.
Linux has these things, too, but nowhere in scale or scope, and with relative industry latecomers to sell it. If Linux were created 10-12 years sooner and companies like Suse, RH, Canonical, System76 were all formed earlier than they were I think we’d see a healthy amount of Linux out in the world, with maybe a few percent higher market share (which would be extremely massive).
Keep in mind that Apple, as a company, rebuilt itself truly not on the technical excellence of Macintosh, but by driving sales of iPods then iPhones.
Apple’s success came from Microsoft’s negligence. Too many people had Windows XP computers at home wrecked with toolbars and spyware and garbage.
And people gladly left for a walled garden platform that locked down everything and didn’t require them to administer their own systems.
The biggest success in the Linux world has been Chromebooks and Android, where Google administers the system for the user.
Most people don’t choose linux because they can’t administer their own system. A system that lets them administer however they want has no appeal to them. They instinctively know they can’t handle that responsibility. They need their hands held.
Even if all of the operating systems were playing on a fair & ideal field, I do not think Linux would come out as the clear winner.
The Linux ecosystem is stakeholder owned. That is to say that design decisions are made by experienced users for experienced users. Whenever an ergonomic tradeoff exists between ease of use and expressiveness, ease of use loses. New users sense this and feel implicitly unwelcome. It’s the original sin of open source software as a whole, really.
I don’t necessarily take this state of affairs as a bad thing, but it does lead me to think that the dominant OS software will always be a commercial product of some variety. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a proprietary greed-fest like Windows, but at the very least the top-level stakeholders of that specific project need to be directly motivated by user adoption. AOSP (aka: Android) would be a decent example of something like this working in the wild for an open source project (Google attempting to claw back control notwithstanding).
I have a theory that I haven’t explored yet. My mom is not a computer user. She barely knows how to use one, so she doesn’t have knowledge of the MS Windows or MacOS approach of using computers. I suspect if I gave her a laptop with Ubuntu on it and showed her the ropes of how to use it she’d get along very fine. I think she would be able to navigate the UI and never need more technical knowledge than remembering her computer’s password.
Now, before anyone goes and accuses me of being a bad son for leaving my mom in the technological dark, I just want to say she gets by pretty happily with the iPad I got for her, which has an even more foolproof interface than any traditional desktop OS.
I thought about this before, and mostly agree. My mom knows nothing about computers and could probably use Ubuntu if I stick it on a machine and gave it to her. The thing preventing me from doing it is that when things go wrong in Linux, it often requires extensive terminal usage to fix. And my mother can often find new and creative ways to break a computer. If something went wrong with it, I would have to fix it. There is literally no one else she knows who would even know where to start. At least if she’s on windows, she can find someone to help her.
